Some of the top technology companies, including Intel, Microsoft, Dell,
and Advanced Micro Devices joined forces Tuesday to form the PC Gaming Alliance,
which will try to promote the PC as a gaming platform.

The alliance will bring hardware makers, software companies, and game publishers
under one roof to "accelerate innovation, improve the gaming experience for
consumers and serve as a collective source of market information and expertise
on PC gaming," the alliance said in a statement.

The companies will work together on challenges facing the PC gaming industry,
including piracy and the establishment of hardware requirements for PC games,
the alliance said. PCGA also hopes to accelerate growth of the PC gaming
industry and standardize the development of gaming PCs and software by
developing and promoting guidelines.

The alliance comes at a time when PC video game sales are falling. PC games
sales in the U.S. were $910.7 million in 2007, down from $970 million in 2006,
according to research from NPD Techworld. PC game sales in 2007 dwarfed in
comparison to the sale of software for video game consoles like Sony's
PlayStation and Nintendo's Wii, which were $6.6 billion.

Unit shipments of PC game software totaled 36.4 million in 2007, compared to
video game software unit shipments of 153.9 million, according to NPD.

The U.S. gaming industry already has the Entertainment Software Association,
which represents vendors that publish games for both computers and consoles.
About 90 percent of the $7.4 billion revenue of PC and console gaming software
in 2006 belonged to ESA members, giving the association a dominant presence.

Other PCGA members include Acer, Epic, Nvidia and Razer USA.

The announcement comes during the Game Developers Conference, which is being
held in San Francisco. During the show PCGA member Intel launched a new gaming
platform formerly code-named "Skulltrail." The Intel Dual Socket Extreme Desktop
Platform includes two quad-core microprocessors, totaling eight-processing
engines, and supports graphics cards from ATI or Nvidia.

Just like you have a market for high end cars and performance you have an "enthusiast" market of gamers. I'm not talking about enthusiast who play XBOX live with Guitar Hero not even those who play COD4 on a console, I'm talking competition players and those who enjoy high end "control" within a game. Right now the gaming industry is focusing on the "casual gamer" with consoles. Believe me, some smart people will realize there is a market of enthusiast PC gamers to go after. The concept of competition gaming is at its highest on the PC and it may crossover a bit with some titles on the consoles, but full fledge crossover would require keyboard and mouse support in games. I think Sony is the only one that gets that so far with the PS3.

I just didn't feel that that was what you were saying, rather that you were arguing that somehow because all these "firsts" were on the PC that somehow the PC is inherently better than other platforms.

You are completely missing my point. I'm saying that all these genres were either invented or made popular on the PC. And that's called innovation. Innovation is what made pc gaming big and is what's going to keep it alive.

FPS invented on the PC.RTS invented on the PC.RPG invented on the PC.MMO invented on the PC.User created mods invented on the PC.Multiplayer online gaming invented on the PC.

Even if all those "facts" are correct (and they are debatable as I've seen other threads where people have argued these with you), who cares?

Just because one platform was the invention of something, does not imply that that platform is inherently superior to all others. If anything the opposite is likely true, as future designs can take advantage of mistakes made in the originals and improve upon them.

At best this is just a nostalgic "remember the good old days" argument which, I'll grant you, the PC has a number of, but that doesn't mean that the PC is somehow superior to all other platforms for video games, which is the rhetoric of your post.

What they need to do is promote PC gaming as the upper echelon. Minor League (consoles) versus Major League. Or the console guys need to add keyboard and mouse support to their games. In that regard the PS3 is King. The XBOX 360 a toy.

Way back when, I went from a sega genesis to a 386. For me it was because games for PCs were different, and the control scheme was, and still is, far superior.

The games were generally more mature and covered far more topics and settings. Since consoles have become so popular, that line is now blurred. Many "adult themed" games are now available on the console, and this is to be expected given that gamers are aging and there are a number of different platforms on the market now. I have to say I am really disappointed and worried about the trend to "consolize" and make poor ports to the PC that I've experienced over the past couple of years. It simply doesn't take advantage of all the platform has to offer and is a deliberate decision on the part of the publisher to maximize profits and minimize costs. Back in the 386 days, PC versions had more features, not less. Why has this changed?

There are still games that I love that are, for now at least, only on PC. Every non-arcade flight sim for example. Which brings me back to controls. I can plug in a variety of controls and gamepads into my PC. How am I supposed to connect a programmable stick, throttle, and rudder pedals into a console? So let's make a console that accepts keyboard, mouse, and other peripherals. Let's see, it now has all this, a hard-drive, system memory, CPU, and GPU. Sounds like a PC to me.... a non-upgradeable, proprietary machine that is good for only a few specific things.

The PC as a platform is amazingly flexible and versatile, which is why it will likely remain my platform of choice. Contrary to popular belief (if it is), it does not cost a lot of money to maintain a decent rig. It will if you want a Ferrari, but you know, I think a Corvette is damn fine.

I remember spending a number of hours trying to free up 600kb of memory by fiddling with config.sys and autoexec.bat before successfully running Aces over Europe. I remember rebuilding Windows95 every 2-3 months. I waited a year before u/g to XP. I haven't had to rebuild the o/s once, even through a couple of u/g's. I can't remember it ever being this easy to play games on the PC as a platform. I waited to hear what Vista is like before taking the plunge. Glad I did, and so much for swimming Is there buggy software? Yep, there was back then too, even on the consoles (game breaking crash near the end of Sega's Outlander for eg.), but that's not the fault of the platform, that's the fault of the people making the software for it. Maybe it's a lack of tighter standards. If so, hopefully this group will address that.

I also recall way back when overhearing conversations about people d/l cracked games from BBS'. That, sadly, has not changed either, and still remains a poor argument for abandoning the PC as a platform.

Regardless of who is right and who is wrong, if once die-hard PC enthusiasts like Chris Taylor are forgoing PC development for consoles, I don't see a lot of hope for PC gaming, except for indie games and leftover console ports. Dammit.

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” - Mahatma Gandhi

Instead we need more glorious fuckheads like Jerykk who torrent all of their games under the pretense of "try-before-you-buy" and then end up never buying a game because once they have finished their pirated copy for the 6th time in a row they decide that the game is not worthy of their cash due to some bullshit reason.

A good start would be DX10 support for XP. But ultimately all that will come of this 'alliance' will simply be new vile copy protection schemes, which will serve to worsen the problem by putting out legit buyers while not stopping piracy.

Ultimately what will happen is a return to indie gaming.

Let's hope. The only 3-5 games I play right now are either TC/mods or indie. It's ironic to laud console gaming (no modding) for games like GH, when you can get it for free (in several flavors, without piracy, and with tons of add-ons and mods), on PC.

Um, no. The last thing we need are more retards for developers to cater to.

Yup. Instead we need more glorious fuckheads like Jerykk who torrent all of their games under the pretense of "try-before-you-buy" and then end up never buying a game because once they have finished their pirated copy for the 6th time in a row they decide that the game is not worthy of their cash due to some bullshit reason.Please. Shut the fuck up, dude. It's sickening to read all that crap from you who is only contributing to the problem by not even buying his games. You have the balls to demand more quality games? What the fuck would give you, a thief, that right? Start buying games instead of downloading them. Then speak. Asshole.

you do realize that the statistics are used by developers to persuade investors to give money for the development of a game on each platform. you cannot lump all consoles into one because each will require a separate budget for development. just like the pc has to have its own. the bottom line is if the cost of development is broken down to individual platform then the return on investment for pc game development is not shrinking like most people say because they are using a flawed method of presenting statistics.

THAT is the audience that's needed to bring PC gaming back, but it's also the audience with the least tolerance for problems of any kind.

Um, no. The last thing we need are more retards for developers to cater to. What we need are PC games designed for hardcore PC gamers. No dumbed down shit, no concerns about appealing to everyone, no cross-platform development. Just good games made by and for people who have been playing PC games for years.

Unfortunately, the nature of business dictates that profits take precedence over integrity, loyalty and passion. This is why so many developers have betrayed the PC gaming community that helped them rise to prominence. If you want to make the most money, you cater to the masses or in this case, console players.

To be honest, I wouldn't mind if the PC returned to the niche it once held. Games wouldn't be as flashy or have the same production values as they do now but they'd at least be designed by people who care more about games than money.

" more of a problem is the fact for years we been being served pushed out the door half finished games."

Amen to that. I noticed that games got in worse and worse shape as internet access became more widespread. Before games more or less worked as advertised. Then "Demo discs" started shipping with magazines. They usually held a demo or two, and a shitpile of patches for various games. Eventually most everybody got internet access and it became the norm to ship busted ass-games. It really had become ridiculous in terms of quality control. Way back you had to know what you were doing to a certain extent. Loading drivers into high memory to free up enough base ram and most people who owned a PC 20 years ago knew what they were doing. I remember having to write seperate .bat and .config files for boot disks for different games. Anybody remember trying to get Falcon 3 to run on a 386? (Ahh good old DOS 4GW Protected Mode.)The average PC user now knows how to turn it on a work the mouse, but little else. THAT is the audience that's needed to bring PC gaming back, but it's also the audience with the least tolerance for problems of any kind.

The fact is you don't need the uber PC for your day to day computing needs. Using your office software, maybe some web and photo/graphical software, you simply don't need to upgrade.

As others have stated, if the next-gen consoles come with mouse and keyboard I won't be a PC gamer anymore. PC gaming drove innovation. Not anymore.

"You know, the best part of the best drug in the world isn't the high. It's the moment just before you take it. The dice are dancing on the table. Between now and the time they stop, that's the greatest high in the world."- Walter Abrams

"Lights going out and a kick in the balls. That's entertainment, that's entertainment"

Question. Back in the day of the early pc gaming scene with stuff like doom, almost everyone let their friends copy their game and thus piracy was rampant. Yet the developers kept releasing pc games and the industry did not die? Why did it not die? These days piracy is killing pc gaming right?

Oh that's right because PC's then were the most innovative gaming platform and development costs were low enough that enough people bought it to make it profitable despite the piracy. In fact piracy helped make the PC gaming scene grow. People bought computers and bought hardware to play these innovative games.

So here is a hint for today pc gaming industry, learn from the past, focus on innovation, not more polygons and better pixel and vertex shaders and make the PC an innovative gaming platform once again.

FPS invented on the PC.RTS invented on the PC.RPG invented on the PC.MMO invented on the PC.User created mods invented on the PC.Multiplayer online gaming invented on the PC.

Right now, if you're a big shooter developer, you're going to lead on a console and you're going to do a PC SKU after. You're not going to be your projections and thinking about your market as your PC. You're going to be thinking about your market on the console. So you're going to focus all of your creativity around your control scheme of your console, your audience of your console, the age group that you're going after on your console and what features they want. You're going to cater to that audience…It's going to be market driven.

Wow, if there was ever a sellout developer, Chris Taylor is it.

Developers need to put pressure on Console makers to support Mouse & Keyboard and Sony needs to take advantage of this for the PS3.

----------------------------------------------------Currently fragging in The Witcher, Burnout Paradise, Company of Heroes, Crysis

If a new title doesn't run on a relatively modern computer then then the programmers simply don't know how to(or didn't even bother to) optimize.

Hmm crysis comes to mind but possible more of a problem is the fact for years we been being served pushed out the door half finished games. We hardcore gamers bitch about it but will spend hours tweaking and searching to get the game working but what about the average user that has no clue? they just say fuck it and buy a console and there a lot more of them than us.